Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages
Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages

Author: Peter Schrijver

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-04

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1134254490

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History, archaeology, and human evolutionary genetics provide us with an increasingly detailed view of the origins and development of the peoples that live in Northwestern Europe. This book aims to restore the key position of historical linguistics in this debate by treating the history of the Germanic languages as a history of its speakers. It focuses on the role that language contact has played in creating the Germanic languages, between the first millennium BC and the crucially important early medieval period. Chapters on the origins of English, German, Dutch, and the Germanic language family as a whole illustrate how the history of the sounds of these languages provide a key that unlocks the secret of their genesis: speakers of Latin, Celtic and Balto-Finnic switched to speaking Germanic and in the process introduced a 'foreign accent' that caught on and spread at the expense of types of Germanic that were not affected by foreign influence. The book is aimed at linguists, historians, archaeologists and anyone who is interested in what languages can tell us about the origins of their speakers.

The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples
The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples

Author: Herwig Wolfram

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2005-03-18

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 0520244907

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An account of the Germanic peoples and their kingdom between the 3rd and 8th centuries, as they invaded, settled in and transformed the Roman empire.

Of Kindred Germanic Origins
Of Kindred Germanic Origins

Author: Jodie Scales

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001-11-30

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0595205836

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A compelling and evocative history of an ordinary 21st century American family detailing its varied and diverse historical and cultural elements through out history. An enthralling journey through time and culture giving a strong narrative account of the similar Germanic roots of many American families. Using records and tools as varied as archeology, anthropology, ethnology, etymology, geology, mythology, legends and historical documentation, Scales embarks on a fascinating quest to link together the pieces of a vast jigsaw of the forgotten Germanic heritage of many American families while developing a chronological framework to historical events and family bloodlines. With an astonishing insight into the cultural effects of the travels and historical events of our founding fathers, more than a dozen separate family lines are identified with their earliest American ancestors and which part of the ancient Germanic world those families came from. Reaching as far back into the origin of the Cimbrians and Teutanians, early Celtic peoples known as Germanic Tribes coming down from the Alps, where Switzerland is now located, to their arrival in Germany then on to the shores of the American colonies, sets a framework for the detailed history of the Germanic people who’s blood still runs in many American veins.

Interrogating the 'Germanic'
Interrogating the 'Germanic'

Author: Matthias Friedrich

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 3110701626

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Any reader of scholarship on the ancient and early medieval world will be familiar with the term 'Germanic', which is frequently used as a linguistic category, ethnonym, or descriptive identifier for a range of forms of cultural and literary material. But is the term meaningful, useful, or legitimate? The term, frequently applied to peoples, languages, and material culture found in non-Roman north-western and central Europe in classical antiquity, and to these phenomena in the western Roman Empire’s successor states, is often treated as a legitimate, all-encompassing name for the culture of these regions. Its usage is sometimes intended to suggest a shared social identity or ethnic affinity among those who produce these phenomena. Yet, despite decades of critical commentary that have highlighted substantial problems, its dominance of scholarship appears not to have been challenged. This edited volume, which offers contributions ranging from literary and linguistic studies to archaeology, and which span from the first to the sixteenth centuries AD, examines why the term remains so pervasive despite its problems, offering a range of alternative interpretative perspectives on the late and post-Roman worlds.

Early Germanic Literature and Culture
Early Germanic Literature and Culture

Author: Brian Murdoch

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9781571131997

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A collection of fresh essays examining the wide scope and significance of early Germanic culture and literature. The first volume of this set views the development of writing in German with respect to broad aspects of the early Germanic past, drawing on a range of disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, and philology in addition toliterary history. The first part considers the whole concept of Germanic antiquity and the way in which it has been approached, examines classical writings about Germanic origins and the earliest Germanic tribes, and looks at thetwo great influences on the early Germanic world: the confrontation with the Roman Empire and the displacement of Germanic religion by Christianity. A chapter on orality -- the earliest stage of all literature -- provides a bridgeto the earliest Germanic writings. The second part of the book is devoted to written Germanic -- rather than German -- materials, with a series of chapters looking first at the Runic inscriptions, then at Gothic, the first Germanic language to find its way onto parchment (in Ulfilas's Bible translation). The topic turns finally to what we now understand as literature, with general surveys of the three great areas of early Germanic literature: Old Norse, Old English, and Old High and Low German. A final chapter is devoted to the Old Saxon Heliand. Contributors: T. M. Andersson, Heinrich Beck, Graeme Dunphy, Klaus Düwel, G. Ronald Murphy, Adrian Murdoch, Brian Murdoch, Rudolf Simek, Herwig Wolfram. Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read both teach in the German Department of the University of Stirling in Scotland.

Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)
Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)

Author: Stephan Elspaß

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-26

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 311092546X

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Focusing on the sociolinguistic history of Germanic languages, the current volume challenges the traditional teleological approach of language historiography. The 30 contributions present alternative histories of ten ‘big’ as well as ‘small’ Germanic languages and varieties in the last 300 years. Topics covered in this book include language variation and change and the politics of language contact and choice, seen against the background of standardization processes of written and oral text genres and from the viewpoint of larger sections of the population.